Building your running mental toughness can encourage you to lace up your running shoes, dig deep in the final miles of your half marathon, and can even prevent you from being too hard on yourself.
But how do you build your mental toughness for running?
Because building it can help you run a mile without walking, run a new personal record, and motivate you to reach new running goals.
You’ve probably heard it before: you have to train your mind like you train your body to run.
The good thing is, it’s a skill that you can get good at with practice.
Now, mental toughness isn’t a substitute for physical training. (You can’t set out to run your first marathon successfully without any training.)
But mental toughness can push your running to a new level.
Ready to learn more? In this post, we’ll break it down into four simple ways you can build your running mental toughness today.
Let’s dive in.
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HOW TO BUILD YOUR RUNNING MENTAL TOUGHNESS
Do the running workouts you don’t think you can do
First, an important note: Use this tip only if you have a well-rounded running training plan that builds your weekly mileage by about 10% a week, incorporates speed work, and uses rest days and weeks.
Without an intentional running plan, you’ll risk pushing yourself too much too soon, which is a recipe for a running injury.
Back to the running mental toughness tip: do the running workouts you don’t think you can do.
This is really about nudging yourself slightly outside your comfort zone.
Let’s say you’re nervous about your next long run that’s at a distance you’ve never run before.
Your longest run so far has been 6 miles. But next weekend, you’re scheduled to do 8 miles, and you’re not sure how you can handle this distance.
Go for that run and see what you’re capable of that day. Can you run 6.1 miles? 6.5? 7? Even 8?
Even if you didn’t complete the entire 8 miles, anything over 6 miles is longer than any run you’ve done before.
You’ve stretched yourself outside your running limits—you did the running workout you didn’t think you could do.
And, you’ve expanded both your running endurance and your running mental toughness.
Boost your running mental toughness with this mantra: “I am a runner”
Whether you run because you enjoy it or if you’ve been running for years, this one phrase can trip up many runners, because we have our ideas of what a runner should be.
Maybe to you, a runner is someone who has run a marathon.
Or maybe a runner is someone who can run without walk breaks.
A runner is someone who runs—whether that’s for a minute or hours.
A runner is someone who runs. That’s it.
Right now, if your brain is ticking off all the reasons why you’re not a runner, you have to get it on board.
So try this: write down all the runs you do so that you can get your mind to accept that you are, in fact, a runner.
I created a running planner so that you can write down your runs. And to inspire you to keep going for your running goals, track your progress, and highlight your running accomplishments.
Write down your running accomplishments
Writing down your runs has another perk—it can be your source of running motivation.
It’s easy to brush off the good runs, but your list of running accomplishments shines the spotlight on what’s going well with your running.
And this also helps you stay consistent and focused with running, a vital part of building and strengthening your running mental toughness.
It could be a workout streak, running continuously for a few minutes, or finishing your first half marathon—anything you’re proud of goes into this file.
So any time you’re feeling low on running motivation or if you feel like you’re not making much progress, go back to your file and review everything you’ve done.
Set a running goal range
We all know how to set goals—focus on something you want and go after it.
But sometimes, this method doesn’t work.
We choose a goal that’s too easy, so we get bored.
Or we choose a goal that’s too hard, so we get frustrated and give up.
For example, let’s say that you run twice a week, so you’ve now set your new running goal at running five times a week.
Running five days a week is a challenging goal, and you’ll have to rework your schedule to do this.
But what if this week, you only ran twice?
And the next week, you ran just three times?
Would you think that you’ve failed? Would you feel like giving up because you can’t seem to move closer to your goal?
You wouldn’t be alone.
With this one goal—running five days a week—you have to strike this balance between a goal that you can do easily, or challenge yourself to the point of massive frustration.
You can make it easier on yourself if you set a goal range, instead of a single, all-or-nothing number.
So instead of a running goal of running five days a week, aim to run anywhere from two days to five days a week.
A goal range offers you the best of both worlds—a goal that you do (run twice a week) and one that stretches you (run five days a week).
You can reach your running goals, and you don’t have to be stressed or discouraged about it.
CONCLUSION
You can train your mind like you train your body to run. And I hope that you can use these tips to build and strengthen your mental toughness today.
If you’d like to plot out your running goals, stay on top of your training, list your running achievements, and much more, come on over and have a look at the running planner.
Finally, if you want even more mental toughness tips, be sure to grab this freebie download.